Mount Pleasant Magazine Shoot

I had another wonderful shoot for Mount Pleasant Magazine last week.

Margaret, the editor, wanted a cover shot for their Spring issue. Since the Bridge Run and the Family Circle Cup are the two biggest events in town each spring, a concept was hatched to photograph the Founder of the 10K run, Julian Smith…with Bob Moran, the Tournament Director of the Family Circle Cup. The thought was to photograph them at the top corner of the FCC stadium with the new Arthur Ravanel Jr. bridge in the background.

However, as you can see by the first image, the bridge is waaaaay off in the distance and hardly noticeable! So to solve the equation, I hiked to the oposite end of the stadium and photographed them with a 600mm focal length! Knowing that one of the optical charactaristics of a telephoto lens is it’s ability to compress the background, we got exactly what we needed! The two gentleman from their respective events were nicely framed on the corner of the stadium with the bridge looming prominantly in the background, combining elements from each sport!

The other factor in bringing this image to life was how to light it?!? The amazing RadioPopper Px System that I used made this very complex task quite simple. I set up 5 remote SB-800 strobes as close to my subjects as possible, just outside of the frame. The late afternoon sun created a rim light from the back right side. So I elected to light them from the left front to achieve balanced look. Once I was in place on the other side of the stadium, I was able to wirelessly control the output of each remote flash using the Nikon CLS system, controlling each of the 5 SB-800 strobes individually with one on-camera SB-900. Normally this would not have been possible because of the vast distance between us. But the amazing RadioPopper Px system converted the signal from my Master flash into radio waves, allowing me to dial my remote units up and down in spite of being so far away.

Everything worked like a charm! And even though it was a seemingly logistical nightmare, a little pre-planning, some experience with long lenses, and the right lighting gear made everything go smoothly and efficiently. Knowing how busy these two gentleman are, I think they were very happy to be in and out in about 15 minutes!!!